1. The Hour of Power
Robin Sharma is a motivational speaker and essentially a productivity coach. We are big fans of his work and particularly his “hour of power” morning ritual.
As we mentioned in our blog “5 tips for the best night’s sleep ever”, do a brain dump and plan your essential 3 to do’s for the next day.
Set your alarm at 5am, (Yes we know…5am…) get up immediately and split your next 60 minutes into three segments.
The first 20 minutes is going to be either stretching or a light bodyweight circuit. Do anything and put a timer (use an IPad) where you can see it. Get a sweat on. This helps produce Norepinephrine and Dopamine, both neurotransmitters that help with focus and motivation.
The next 20 minutes should be focused on reading something that develops you or helps you improve yourself.
The final 20 minutes is a review of the goals you set yourself the night before, and then starting on the first one then and there.
2. Eat Breakfast
A major culprit of people failing to concentrate, eat healthy foods or do their best work during the day is due to skipping breakfast. This usually leads to poor food choices later in the day (due to roller coaster like insulin levels), raised cortisol/ stress levels early in the morning, irritable moods and brain fogs.
Ideally your breakfast should consist of animal proteins, healthy fats, some veggie carbs and water/ Green tea. (Black coffee if you tolerate it and are not dependant on it for energy). Although this may shock you, Red meat is actually one of the best choices due to its effect of our brains producing the neurotransmitters acetyl-choline and dopamine (both giving us motivation, drive and focus).
3. Know What you are Setting out to Achieve Every Day
Before bed every night, we suggest you do a brain dump and write down 3 major tasks that you feel will move your life, career or relationships forward.
Your mission the next day is to get the biggest task done first and do everything in your power to get them done. If some of these tasks require waiting time, or are people dependent, then freeze the top task and move onto number 2. When the top one can move again, get back on it and get it finished.
This will allow you more mental clarity, a feeling of accomplishment and momentum towards the life you want. You will also start building habits that will allow you to get important things done on autopilot, without the need to summon tremendous amounts of willpower.
4. Less is More
In a world where multitasking is encouraged and we are bombarded with more information than ever before, it is very hard not to get distracted.
We receive dozens of emails, social media updates, colleague’s chatter, work deadlines, phone calls and meetings every day.
Multitasking has been shown by researchers to cause a distorted sense of how long it takes to do things, lose 28% of an average workday bouncing between activities and doing them ineffectively, make more mistakes than non multitaskers and have higher stress levels. Bouncing between windows on our browser has also been shown as an addictive behaviour as we produce dopamine when we do this and feel bored and restless without doing so. Apparently we also change windows or check email up to 37 times an hour…
Focus on your single most important task and get it done like your life depended on it.
5. Prepare for the next day
As you may have noticed a trend developing with our Blogs and similar advice being emphasized, this is because repetition of basic habits can lead to life changing experiences without the need for crisis or huge ups and downs in our lives.
Before bed, do a brain dump in your journal (get one if you do not have one yet), of what happened during the day. Get the negative stuff or questions on your mind on paper first.
Then write 3 things you did well, 3 things you did to help other people and then write 3 goals that you feel will move your life the way you want it to go.
By writing these down the night before, you allow your brain the luxury of switching off and your subconscious mind will start working on the solutions for these goals whilst you sleep. This will allow you to wake up with a clear mind and sense of purpose the next day.
Try it for just 3 days and see how it works for you.